I'm allergic to eggs and dairy. Has anyone tried quinoa for breakfast. I saw a recipe for a quinoa "oatmeal" with apples and raisins and cinnamon.
Would this spike my blood sugar just as much because it is still a grain? Or would it be a better choice?
Chia seed pudding made with almond milk (and using Splenda or another non-sugar sweetener instead of the honey or syrup listed in the recipe) is incredibly yummy and might be a good alternative:
That sounds delicious. I'll give it a try. Thanks!
Sorry, my bad!
I have Pumping Insulin on my kindle along with Think like a Pancreas. I have Using Insulin in hard back.
Thank you for pointing this out, and sorry if I gave bad info on Using Insulin.
Have you seen their websites? They both have lots of resources on line.
You don't have to do breakfast for breakfast if it doesn't work for you.
Can you do dairy products?
Unsweetened Greek yogurt with some cinnamon and splenda
Meat and cheese rollups - lunch meat cheese rolled around a pickle spear, or rolled in lettuce or in a corn tortilla or low carb wrap.
Protein smoothies - Protein powder buzzed in blender with a green veg or pumpkin puree, add slice of choice plus liquid of your choice and choose flavor of protein powder to match. The liquid can be hot or cold.
What about dinner leftovers - meat and veggies in a low carb wrap.
Tuna salad in lettuce cups.
It might work better for you if you have your higher carb meals later in the day.
Wondering if it’s possible for you to skip breakfast one day and see if you get the spike anyway. That will show you that the problem is with your basal Lantus and not your Apidra dose ( I.e. not related to eating). If your blood sugar drops or stays the same, then you know the problem is with what you are eating and/or your breakfast Apidra.
Another possibility is that you got a compromised vial of Apidra. Try a new one if possible and see if you have better results. I have had this problem with Humalog occasionally.
Chia seed and flax seeds or flax meal may give a better result than quinoa(you can try the quinoa and see what happens- that is the only way to tell really) because they're much lower carb, if you want that type of an easy breakfast food... I add 1T chia 1T flax seed to a dish, add boiling water, let it sit for 3-5 minutes, then add stevia and heavy cream, some berries and enjoy.
For DP, do you have DP? I have successfully stayed flat 3x so far with the flax/chia seeds etc., without blueberries, before sleeping with no bolus. It is very slow to metabolize through the time you sleep so it won't spike you and it tricks your liver into not putting out glycogen, today I went hypo though after waking up at 78 so I have other issues sometimes.
again, have you seen a real, board certified allergist and done a true skin test or RAST allergy test? As Sam stated, nearly everyone who goes to a naturopathic 'doctor' comes back with about 10 allergies they probably don't even have. Breakfast is the most difficult meal for most of us, our blood sugars rise high upon waking or starting to wake and cereal is one of the worst things to eat, don't know too many T1's who can eat it for breakfast. Also, are you doing just 1 PM dose of lantus, how much? we typically do increases for basal 1 unit at a time, as I would imagine you still may be insulin sensitive being somewhat newly diagnosed? It matters what number you're going to bed at not just what you're waking up to.
Agreed Sarah, if it didn’t come from an MD, DO, PA, or NP it’s not medicine— chiropractors (thats who referred her to some mail order lab) have an important job to do (tweaking backs and necks) but they have no place referring patients for any such testing by goofy naturopathic labs and no proper training to interpret results of any labs whatsoever… My mom is an MD and she will rant and rave until people’s ears bleed about how out-of-line a lot of chiropractors are…
hi Ashley I quickly read through the replies you received so far. Do you pre bolus 10-20 minutes before eating depending on your blood sugar?? this can help. also are you eating a balance of carbs/ fats/ proteins with every meal? if your meal is too carb loaded you will spike. keep adjusting and you are you will find your balance. if you aren't exercising regularly this will help also and it doesn't have to be anything crazy a short walk after dinner or even some dare I say 'heavy housework' well timed might help a bit. best wishes, amy
If you try the breakfast quinoa, I'd suggest adding in a protein with fat to slow down the spike. Because the quinoa and and fruit are all very carby. You might want to try adding seeds (chia, hemp, sunflower) or nuts, or their respective butters to your quinoa, depending on your allergies. (Being allergic to all nuts, I find sunflower butter and seeds to make great subs in stuff) But experimenting with whole grains sounds better than what you're dealing with each day with the Krispies…
As a fellow allergy person, my go-to breakfasts tend to be 1) steel-cut oats with a bunch of hemp seed mixed in, a smoothie (more greens than fruit, also with added seeds to slow the spike), or a tofu & veggie scramble. All are egg and dairy-free. You can't do oats, but maybe #s 2 or 3 could work for you.
true that...true that, Sam. :)
Hi Ashley, I've had this disease a long time. My best suggestion: you might try reading Dr. Bernstein's books on Diabetes, available on Amazon. One I have sitting here is "The Diabetes Solution." He is a Type I diabetic as well as an MD, and he personally meets a lot of great targets for control and health. I always wonder about allergies but (due to carbs) I avoid all grains and flour as much as possible so gluten, for example, isn't in my diet that I know of...flaxseed makes a great breakfast cereal, you can put water with it, some salt to taste, perhaps some butter, and microwave it in a bowl like instant oatmeal...you could call this "mush" I guess. It's about 2 carbs per tablespoon before cooking. Pour heavy cream (diluted with water, as Dr. Bernstein suggests) or half and half on it and get fewer carbs than with milk (even whole milk is sweet enough to correct low blood sugar for me). Anyway Dr. Bernstein's "law of small numbers" (i.e., smaller doses of insulin result in a smaller margin of error, so if you don't eat a lot of carb at once you you won't need so much insulin, so then errors you inevitably make are smaller) helps me a lot, as have his suggestions about how to eat. With the caveat that there is little accountability re: manufacturers' carb info, you also might try "total available glucose" carb counting (on this site). But Dr. Bernstein is the best. I am not on this site much but I think there are some fans on here too... hope it helps. Lots of variables, so sympathetic to your frustration. Good luck.
Since breakfast tends to be 1) sneaky and 2) can get my day off to a bad start, before I had a CGM, I'd do two BG tests, even 20-30 minutes apart, to see if my BG was going up at hat time. If it is, I will bolus and wait a while to eat, to help catch it. I've always liked eggs/ omelettes for breakfast so that's not a problem to me. I am also suspicious of the dx of the allergies from a non-MD type of doc. It sounds highly questionable and, if it's nudging your nutrition somewhere odd, it would be totally worth it to get a second opinion.
Hi Ashley,
You do have a food intolerance -- you have diabetes, so your body is not tolerant of carbohydrates! They will all make your sugar go up because your pancreas does not produce enough insulin to deal with the amounts of glucose that those foods produce in your blood.
I agree with TAG70 -- read Dr. Richard Bernstein, and lower your carbs. I personally find this method much easier than dealing with all those carb/insulin ratios, my BG is so steady and I feel great. I wanted to lose weight and I did, easily. And I don't miss those foods. I eat real, whole foods and I know I am much healthier for it.
Good luck.
I personally find this method much easier than dealing with all those carb/insulin ratios,
Insulin:Carb ratios are used to compute doses. Eating low carb doesn't preclude the need to do that for most of us.
Agreed, you still have to deal with it no matter how many carbs you eat unfortunately. And the results are variable. I still had spikes and lows even at 30g per day and protein/fat can spike me too.
As for food intolerance I don't think carbohydrate is a food per say. She may have true food allergies/sensitivities. Unfortunately testing isn't always reliable. Patch testing is only 75% accurate. There are plenty of sketchy allergists- one told my father when he was a child, that if he didn't stop eating certain foods and have a series of allergy shots he would die from his asthma or something to that effect- needless to say that was not true, lol.
Thanks, everyone, for all your replies. I did get some of the books you suggested. What I have read so far has been very helpful.
I think I have figured out what was spike g my blood sugar in the morning. I think it was the coffee. Or, more accurately, the caffeine. I read that caffeine can effect insulin sensitivity.
Does this happen to anyone else??
I've begun taking a few extra units of insulin with my morning coffee and have noticed much better numbers a few hours later.
there have been many discussions on 'coffee or caffeine"...try one morning and totally skip the caffeine or try drinking the same coffee in the pm and see if your BG's rise? i thought it was the coffee in the AM too, but it's just DP for me, my blood sugars rise and rise upon waking up or prior to waking, with or without coffee.
A couple of things that occur to me when reading these posts are:
1 - Could you have Dawn Phenomenon?
2 - Are you testing @ 3 or 4 hours after eating? Apidra generally lasts for 3 - 6 hours, so testing @ 2 hours after a meal that has sugar in it should produce a high result. (Rice Krispies second ingredient is sugar, after all).
3 - Are you measuring the amount of food?
4 - When you do a correction @ 2 hours are you factoring in the fact that you have only used about 60% of the dose?